


so pick me from the dark and pull me from the grave

by antrashi



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, M/M, No one die y'all, Panic Attacks, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 12:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20210050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antrashi/pseuds/antrashi
Summary: “Hey, Steve” Dustin asks him, puzzled. “Did we just crash intoBilly Hargrove’s car?”Steve squints, assessing.Shit, it could be, yeah. It’s not like Hawkins is brimming with 79’ Camaro. Now what the hell it is doing in the middle of the road, missing its driver, is what Steve would really like to know.---Season 3 AU: The one where Dustin gets back from Camp Knowhere a day early and somehow that changes everything.





	so pick me from the dark and pull me from the grave

**Author's Note:**

> So I took _a lot_ of artistic liberties with this one. (I don't even care at this point, I just wanted to fix things.)
> 
> Here are the some of the ones you should be aware of:  
1\. Dustin gets back from camp a day early.  
2\. Billy's car does not crash so far away from the road, like it does in Episode 1.  
3\. _Back to the Future_ is released a week early, for reasons.

Steve likes to think of himself as one of the Good Guys. Like, okay, he definitely wasn't always one, he knows _that_, but he's trying to be a better person these days, a better _friend_.

So when Dustin had shown up at Scoops this afternoon, all mopey and shit, because his friends ditched him on his first day back in Hawkins, Steve had fed him free ice cream, said _That sucks, man_ and _Hey, want to go to the movies with me tonight? Anything you want to see, my treat._

Because Steve? Steve is a good friend.

(It certainly had nothing to do with him not wanting to go back to his big sad empty house. Nothing to do with that at _all_.)

So that's how Steve finds himself spending his Friday night driving down Cherry Oak Drive, on his way to see some new sci-fi flick he doesn't even give two shits about with his thirteen-year-old (best?) friend. Yeah, that's his life now.

"Steve, step on it, man! We're gonna be _late_," Dustin complains for what must be the tenth time in as many minutes.

"It's not my fault they closed up Main Street, okay? And I'm already going over the speed limit, I'm not going any faster than that."

"My _mom_ drives faster than you."

"Yeah, well, I've seen your mom drive, Dustin. That is _not_ the insult you think it is."

"Excuse you, my mom is a great driver."

Steve snorts. Yeah, _no_, she's really not. Mrs. Henderson is, without a doubt, the worst driver he knows. She almost ran him over in the mall parking lot just the other day, brought him a Tupperware full of cookies at Scoops the next morning to apology and everything. He kept them all to himself, refusing to share any of them with Robin because Mrs. Henderson may be a bad driver, but she's one hell of a cook.

"Look, we're not even late yet. You're not going to miss the start of _Back to the Past_. Just– just chill, okay?"

"I don't want to miss the previews. And it's _Back to the Future_, Steve. The _future_."

Steve throws him a confused look. "What? How can you go back to the-"

"Steve, _look out_!"

Steve whips his head back toward the road. A car just appeared into his headlights, stopped haphazardly smack in the middle of the street less than a few yards ahead. He slams his foot on the brake pedal, hears the tires screeching against the pavement, but it's already too late, there's not nearly enough room to slow them down. They crash straight into it. The force of the impact throws Steve forward against the wheel, his seatbelt catching his weight and stopping his momentum, knocking the wind right out of him.

He gasps, turns toward Dustin, one hand reaching for him across the console. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Got no collarbones to break, remember?" His voice sounds a bit shaky, but he looks mostly unharmed. "Are _you_ okay?"

"Yeah, I think so."

Dustin studies him for a second, frowns. "You sure? Because dude, your head is bleeding," he says, pointing a finger at his forehead.

Now that he mentions it, Steve's head _does_ hurt. He brings a hand up to his brow, winces when his fingers come away red and sticky with blood. "Shit. I must have smashed it into the wheel or something." He wipes his fingers against the fabric of his shirt. "Okay. I'm gonna go see if there's anyone in the other car. You stay put," he adds.

"Um, how about _no_?" Dustin scoffs. "I'm not letting you go out there _alone_, Steve."

Steve blinks at him, then shrugs, starting to fumble with his seatbelt. "Yeah, sure, whatever."

From outside, he can better appreciate the damage that has actually been done to his car. It' s—_bad_, there's no other way to say it. The bumper is hanging halfway off, the left headlight is shattered and thick dark smoke is starting to escape from under the hood. He grimaces, there's no way his Scoops Ahoy money is going to be able to pay for those kinds of repairs. Shit, his dad is going to _kill_ him.

"Hey, Steve," Dustin suddenly asks, puzzled. "Did we just crash into _Billy Hargrove's_ car?"

Steve tears his eyes away from his own car to squint at the other one, assessing. _Shit, it could be, yeah._ It's not like Hawkins is brimming with 79' Camaro.

He walks up to the driver's side, peering in through the window to study the interior. Just as he suspected, there's no one inside. The keys are still in the ignition, though – which, _weird_. Other than that, there's nothing much to see – a pack of smokes, a pair of sunglasses, a red hoodie bunched on the passenger's seat, the community pool logo peeking out. So it _is_ Hargrove's car. Now what the hell it is doing in the middle of the road, missing its driver, is what Steve would really like to know.

The thing is, Steve hasn't seen Billy since school ended two weeks ago and even before then, has only caught glimpses of him in the hallway or at the arcade parking lot, picking up Max. They seemed to have had this unspoken agreement, since that night at the Byer's house, to actively try and stay out of each other's way. So, Steve hasn't been to the community pool once since summer started and Billy hasn't come anywhere near Scoops either. It all works out.

He steps away from the window to circle the car, frowns when he gets to the front. The bumper is all kind of fucked-up, the windshield's cracked. It looks like Steve's Beemer was not the first thing to have crashed into it tonight. And yeah, there's a chance that _maybe_ Hargrove hit a deer or something, but Steve knows that deer are not the only wildlife commonly found in Hawkins these days.

That small sliver of hope goes flying right out of the window when he next spots lines of freshly dug earth going from the side of the road all the way up to the old steel mill, like something – or _someone_ – had been dragged there. Steve exhales slowly through his nose, rakes a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots. Yeah, this looks _really_ bad. Upside-down kind of bad.

He turns around and goes back to his car; pops open the trunk and starts rummaging. Fuck. _Fuck_. He's beginning to regret this whole Be A Good Guy shtick.

"Steve. What are you doing? _Steve_?"

It takes him a while to find it – his trunk is filled with too much crap and it's too dark outside to see anything more than shadows. Ah, there it is, he thinks, his fingers finally closing around the bat's wooden handle. God, he's so glad he never got rid of that thing. He takes it out and gives it a twirl, getting reacquainted with the feel of its weight in his hand.

"You want us to go _out there_?" Dustin shrieks when he catches sight of it.

"Oh, no. _I'm_ going out there. _You_," Steve says, jabbing the bat in his direction "are going back in the car."

"No!"

"_Yes_"

"Steve, just how hard did you hit your head? This is _stupid_, even for you. It's _Billy Hargrove_. Who cares?"

And yeah, that's true, who cares, right? Why should he go looking for some douchebag who pummelled his face in just a few months ago?

But -- he thinks about Barb. About her going missing from his backyard while he and Nancy were up getting busy in his bedroom barely a few feet away. About how he didn't give a shit about her disappearance – _her death_ – back then, had just wanted to pretend like everything was fine, _normal_. How Nancy was right, how that's such _bullshit_. So yeah, he's not leaving this place with another teenager's death weighing on his conscience, even if it's Billy Hargrove's.

Steve shuts the trunk, turning back to Dustin. "Hey, remember that time I let you drive my car last spring?" Dustin hadn't shut up about how Will's brother had let him drive his car around the Burger King parking lot. Byers drove an old beat-up Ford, not a BMW, but whatever, Steve had finally relented, allowing Dustin to have a go behind the wheel. Needless to say, it had been a complete disaster. There had been a lot of yelling and shouting involved, and Steve had been scarred for life.

(The whole thing had turned out to be a big fat lie, too, he learned the next day when Jonathan had almost pissed himself laughing when Steve had told him about it.)

Dustin nods, confused, clearly not sure where's he's going with this. "Yeah, I ran over the curb, and you told me you'd never let me again, _ever_."

"Yeah, well, I hope you remember something," Steve says, throwing him the keys, "because if I'm not back in fifteen minutes, you take the car and you go straight to Hopper or Mrs. Byer."

He can hear Dustin yelling at him all the way to the mill.

Brimborn Steel Works has been disaffected for years. Steve knows because there used to be parties here, back when he was a sophomore, before it got shut down by the cops when some kind of chemical leaked from the roof right into one of the punch bowls and a bunch of kids got sick. Steve remembers visiting Tommy in the hospital with his mom. Remembers being scared, just like he's scared now. As far as he's aware, nobody had dared to come hang out here anymore after that.

It still looks the same, big and empty, with half of the window panes shattered, dust everywhere. Steve scrunches his nose, somehow it smells worst now, damp and moldy, like something's been festering, rotting away.

"Hargrove? You in here, man?" Steve calls out as he moves into the building, his voice echoing against the walls. He gets no answer. After that, it's only a matter of minutes before he's searched the whole place up. There's nowhere to hide, really, in this big empty space. If Billy was ever here, he's obviously not anymore.

Steve sighs, defeated. He's about to turn and head back outside when he feels something brush against his pant leg. He looks down sharply, ready to swing his bat -- but it's only a couple of rats, scurrying away and down a set of stairs. _Stairs_. That's right, he thinks, there used to be a basement here.

Below, he finds even more rats congregating at the bottom of the stairs, squeaking and hissing. Dozens of them, maybe a hundred. So many that Steve has to sweep a few of them aside with his foot in order to reach the last step. And there, in the darkness, right in front of him, he can swear there is a pile of gore where there was a rat a second before. Did -- did one of the rats just _explode_? _What the actual fuck is going on here?_

From all around him, he can hear the sound of more rats suddenly bursting open, can see their little shadows shuddering on the ground, can feel the floor growing wet and slippery under his feet as he moves deeper into the basement. He wants to throw up. It was so _so_ stupid to come down here alone. He should have asked Dustin to radio for backup at the very least.

"Anyone here? Hargrove?" Steve calls out, once again, uneasy. Still, no answer.

Then he sees it, out of the corner of his eye, near the back of the room, something trashing on the floor, bigger than a rat, _person-sized_. He turns around to face it and _shit_, he just found Billy Hargrove. Billy Hargrove, whose feet are kicking uselessly in the air while a facehugger straight from Alien clings to his face.

"Oh, shit. _Shit shit shit_."

Steve rushes over, throws himself on his knees and grabs the thing with both hands, pulling with all his might but that fucker is not letting go. _Fuck, okay, plan B_. He gets back up, raises his bat high, plants his feet. It's dark and Billy is moving around too much, Steve isn't sure he'll be able to aim well enough not to hit Billy across the head. God, he really hopes he doesn't hit him, he thinks, before he takes a swing at the creature. He's fucking lucky is what he is, because it _works_ and the thing goes flying into the wall with a _splat_ before sliding down to the ground, dead. Not one to take chances, Steve gives it a few more whacks, just to be sure.

On the floor next to him, Billy coughs and coughs and _coughs_, tries to catch his breath only to wheeze and choke all over again. At one point, he rolls over on his side and throws up black slimly-looking gunk until he's dry-heaving, coughing some more. It's almost a full minute later until he finally appears to get his breathing back under control. He spits on the ground one last time before slumping onto his back, eyes closed.

When he opens them, his gaze is hazy and unfocused, brows furrowed. "Harrington?"

"Come on, man, I don't want to stay and see if this thing has friends," Steve says, holding a hand out to him.

But Billy doesn't take it. "What was that?" He slurs, his eyes darting around the room, stopping first on the pile of goo that was once the creature, then on the bat in his hand, "Are those _nails_?"

"C' mon we gotta go. _Now._"

Billy nods, reaches for his hand and lets himself be yanked to his feet. He tries to take a few steps by himself, stumbles, almost falls back down. Steve swears, shoves the bat under his armpit and grabs Billy's elbow in one hand, the other coming to wrap around his back, steadying him. Time to get the fuck out of here.

They stumble out of the mill and straight into Dustin. Steve doesn't even stop to ask him what the fuck he's doing here when he clearly told him to _stay in the car, damn it_, he just grabs him by the collar of his shirt and yanks him towards the car.

Steve helps Billy to the passenger seat, basically shoves him in it, really, before he's running to the other side of the car, flinging himself behind the wheel.

"Keys!" he shouts, and Dustin tosses them at him from the backseat. He fumbles with the ignition and breathes a sigh of relief when he hears the engine roar to life. There's a screech of metal on metal as he throws the car into reverse, disentangling the Beemer from where it's still caught against the back of Billy's car.

As they set onto the road, Steve imagines shadows moving in the dark out, closing in on them. He leans more heavily on the gas pedal and doesn't look back once.

He takes Dustin home first, shutting down the millions of questions he sends barrelling Steve's way with a promise to call him first thing in the morning. Once he's safe inside, Steve turns back to Billy. "Where do you live?" he asks. "I'll drop you off next."

"Cherry Lane" Billy answers, staring at him – he hasn't stopped staring at him since they left Brimborn, actually. There have been no freak-outs. No screaming. Nothing. Just a whole lot of staring. It's like Billy's trying to puzzle things together and Steve is a piece that just doesn't fit in.

The ride to Billy's place is spent in total silence.

When they get to his house, Billy's out of the car before Steve has even had time to turn off the engine. The door slams behind him and he's gone without a word of thanks thrown his way. _Asshole_, Steve thinks. And Steve, because he's not an asshole himself, waits for Billy to get inside his house before driving away.

Except Billy's just standing there on his porch, making no move to go in. Steve frowns, leans over the passenger seat to roll down the window. "You're thinking of going in anytime soon?" he calls out.

Billy whips around to glare at him. "You think you're my date or something, Harrington? Just _go_."

But Steve doesn't start the car, he just waits. Waits until Billy starts to shift on his feet, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He's not staring at Steve anymore, can't seem to look anywhere near him, really. "I don't have my keys," he finally says. "They're still in my car."

"_Jesus Christ,_" Steve mutters, scrubbing a hand against his face. "Right, okay. Get back in. We're going to my place."

He's surprised when Billy gets back in the car without even a word of protest.

Alone in the kitchen, Steve is freaking out.

"So what the fuck was that?" Billy had asked as soon as they were through the front door.

Steve had ignored the question. "You want a beer? I'll get us some beers." he had said instead. "Living room is on your right."

Just get the beers and get out, he tells himself. But his hand is sweaty and shaky around the fridge's handle. He's stupidly afraid of opening the door only to see a Demodog tumble from it. It's absurd. It's just a fridge. There's nothing inside it that shouldn't be there, he knows that but -- he just can't seem to open it. His vision blurs around the edges, heart picking up speed. Why can't he _just_ _open it_?

He tries to calm himself but he's already starting to hyperventilate and _no_, _please, no_, don't let him have a panic attack with Billy Hargrove right next door. _Fuck._ He can't breathe, he can't breathe, _he can't_–

A hand, warm and heavy settle itself on his shoulder and Steve recoils back, bumping into to the kitchen counter. Beside him Billy raises both hands into the air, taking a step away from him. "You good?" he asks, frowning.

Steve takes a look at the clock on the wall. Ten minutes have gone by, no wonder Billy came to check on him, no one takes ten minutes to get drinks. Steve feels ashamed, feels so fucking stupid. Billy should be the one freaking out right now, he's the one who almost got his face sucked off by some monster tonight. Steve swallows, nods. Billy nods back. "Okay."

Billy hip-check him gently out of the way, opens the fridge (no monster falls out, _of course_) and gets the two beers out himself, leaves the kitchen, Steve trailing behind him.

"So you gonna explain anything to me or what?" Billy tries again, a while later, "I know that you know about this shit."

"Can we just not, tonight? Tomorrow, okay, now let's just-" he trails off. He's afraid that Billy will push, demand answers, but he simply says, "Tomorrow?" and relief washes through Steve. "Yeah, tomorrow."

Billy spreads his legs wider on the couch, his knee knocking against Steve's own, lingering there. "You got anything to smoke, Harrington?" he asks.

"Like cigarettes or-"

Billy snorts. "No, not cigarettes, Harrington. _Weed_. I feel like I'm going to jump out of my skin, over here. Need to relax, you know." And Steve knows that Billy isn't asking for himself, that this is about Steve's aborted freak-out in the kitchen. That he's actually asking if Steve needs anything to take _his_ edge off. And that's kind of nice of him, he guesses? But the thing is, weed is kind of a wild card with Steve, it can make him more paranoid sometimes and he doesn't need that, not tonight. So even though he _does_ have some stashed away in his sock drawer, he lies, "Sorry man, I'm all out right now."

Billy grimaces, takes another swing of his beer, sinking back into the cushions. They're both silent for a moment.

"My mom got some Xanax upstairs, though."

Billy turns back to him, grinning wide, impressed. "No shit, Harrington."

Two Xanax and an hour later and Steve is starting to feel loose and pliant, eyelids growing heavy with sleep. Billy has already fallen asleep on the couch next to him, arms crossed against his chest, neck bent down at an awkward angle, snoring lightly. His beer bottle slipped from his hand to the ground at one point, soaking the carpet. Steve doesn't bother picking it up. He feels gross, knows that he should take a shower, change, go sleep in his own bed. But all of these things would require some amount of effort and he's just so _so_ damn tired. He'll get up in a minute, he decides, he just needs to rest his eyes for a little bit.

Steve is asleep before the minute is even up.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the song Still Feel by Half-Alive
> 
> Well, there it is. Feedback is, as always, very appreciated. Also, English is not my first language so if you see any glaring mistakes, please let me know <3 
> 
> Also, sequel maybe? I don't know.


End file.
